Party in the City Tonight
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: Every city has a story to tell. This cityformer's is told through a character party.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: ** Party in the City Tonight

**Warnings: ** Mentions of kinks and kindnesses.

**Rating: **PG

**Continuity:** G1

**Characters:** Autobots

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors (or scenery), nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): ** Metroplex character party

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**"Yes, you have to have a set of drones****" **(PARTY!)

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

The file is so old it's degraded, archives losing parts and pieces over the passing ages. Yet, still, Metroplex remembers.

"Yes, you have to have a set of drones," the mech in his memory said, ducking under a half-completed console.

Metroplex was younger and newer back then, and less aware of how duty always came before self. "Why is it necessary? You are here. The other engineers are here, and when they are not, the builders are." He had never been alone or lonely. His corridors rang with voices, and many hands worked on him every day. Supplies were always being brought in, never taken out. Feet and wheels crisscrossed his floors to build him higher and higher.

The mech was older than him, and wiser, although his wisdom didn't make sense at the time. "Metroplex, we're a construction crew," he'd said, oddly gentle as he emerged from under the console to grab another tool. "Eventually, we **will** complete your construction. I know it doesn't feel like it right now with all of us crammed into your service ducts and stuffing information through your cortex, but there will come an orn when we pack up our equipment and move out."

The cityformer took a moment to let that percolate in his newly functional processors. The idea went up against all the data he'd gathered so far in his short existence, and doubt tinged his voice. "You will return."

Regret and fondness filled the mech's smile. "If there's another project for us, of course. But I sincerely doubt it'll be the same exact team called back. You're a special project, and anything else you'll need once you're completed will have different project specs. Different people will come to work on you, and then they, too, will move on." His hand lingered briefly on the console surface before returning to work.

The touch triggered a pang of want so deep it bordered on pain: _'I don't want you to move on.' _ Tracking systems suddenly surged ultra-sensitive to every spark of life inside him. They laughed and worked and muttered to themselves, and he was abruptly aware of just how quickly they moved. They streamed out his exits as casually as they re-entered, and only now did he see himself as a worksite instead of a mech.

Something constricted need around his massive spark, and his fuelpump skipped. Three engineers immediately ran a diagnostic, but they couldn't trace the cause because the unspoken words didn't register: _'Stay with me._'

He sought some sort of stability in his programmed directives and came up with a fragment of hope. "I'm to have a city commander. He'll be here."

Sympathy patted his console from the inside in soft words and sad tones. "City commanders are assigned, just like work crews. They, too, go away." The mech hesitated, even if his hands didn't stop working. Because he had a deadline, and now Metroplex actually knew what that meant beyond 'work must be finished by X time.' "That's how it's going to be, Metroplex. It's part of what being a cityformer means. Populations change. People get restless sitting in the same location for too long. They are going to leave you, and not all of them will come back."

It...hurt, to realize that. His body housed a seething community, a shell in which the organism lived and breathed in little bodies. It struck him so hard it skittered excess charge through him that his job wasn't to keep that community trapped, but to shelter it. To enable it to continue growing, coming and going the way normal Cybertronians did.

Metroplex desperately, greedily watched them work and build, preparing to leave him, and thought, _'Don't go.'_

"So." The mech heaved himself out of the console again, getting to his feet. "You need drones."

"I don't understand?" The massive weight of responsibility was settling slowly into him, directives setting up his duties like a work harness snugging into place.

"Drones can't leave you," the mech explained, snapping a panel onto the console side. "They must be here all the time, part of you but separate enough to be independent if needed. You're going to need that social constant, Metroplex. It's the only guarantee you'll ever have." A twinge of sorrow filled the mech's optics, but he only patted the console again. "My shift's up. I'll talk to you next orn, yeah?"

Eons later, long after construction completed and he'd been a city, then a ruin, then a battleground, and then a city once more - Metroplex still remembers. He watches over the lives inside him. They move in. They move out. He protects them and keeps them safe, but in the end, he lets them go.

And in his old files, an empty room whispers, _'Come back.'_

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**"****Earthquake readiness (or lack of)****" **(PARTY HARDER!)

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

"The ground…moves." The disembodied voice sounded skeptical, but also a little squeamish. It reminded Chip Chase of when he'd told his niece about how her uterus worked. She hadn't wanted to believe him, but all the evidence presented had led to an inevitable and distasteful conclusion. She'd sounded like Metroplex did right now. "Tremors are common to this planet?"

"Earthquakes? Yeah." The human continued uploading the Earth information archive to Metroplex, watching the status bar and adding a new directory as the individual files appeared. "Continental drift and plate tectonics should be all be in the Earth-specific Science subfiles, connected to the Geology grouping. You can request a direct line to the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the U.S. Geological Survey will probably be happy to supply you with seismic records of the last fifty years or so for this area. They'd love to get more Autobots involved in their department. Cybertronian equipment really helps the seismologists, and I know there are going to be geologists crawling all over you if approval goes through for the geothermal energy converter."

The disturbed note in Metroplex's voice was enough to vibrate Chip's chair, and the human blinked as he looked up in surprise. "The Yellowstone Caldera is a hugely unstable area. Why has Autobot City been located within the potential blast zone? Drilling for geothermal power increases the danger!"

"It's the best place for it?" At least Metroplex was less shrill about his squirm-worth discomfort with the idea, but Chip still smiled his best reassuring smile at the nearest camera. _'It'll be okay, I promise. This is a perfectly natural thing, and yes, sometimes it goes wrong, but that's a risk you're going to just have to take. You can't exactly remove it.'_ "Metroplex, this isn't a metal world. There isn't a square meter of Earth that isn't somehow going to change on its own. That's what living worlds do. The continental plates are going to continue to drift. Earthquakes **will** happen. You need abundant energy, and quite frankly, humans have been living with the Yellowstone threat without undue alarm for years. Having you in place may actually help predict when The Big One is coming, in fact."

He could almost feel the cityformer look up what 'Big One' he referred to, and the smile widened when a strangled blurt of static came from the speakers. _'__N__o way!'_

Chip pushed his wheelchair back from the consol and settled in for one of those long, awkward discussions his family seemed to like dumping on him. Autobot _and_ human disasters and puberty had strangely similar conversational scripts, apparently.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**"Adventures in bondage.****" **(Party like it's 2005!)

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

"So...you can't transform until it's repaired."

Metroplex was slightly confused that First Aid would insist on restating the obvious. The Battle of Autobot City had left a lot of damage behind, much of it emotional, but First Aid had seemed to be coping well. Had he finally reached a breaking point?

The cityformer weighed his words and decided it wasn't his place to intervene. The Protectobots had suddenly started flocking in this direction, and they could handle First Aid's fragile emotional state. "No."

"Can you move at all?"

"Internal systems are compromised," Metroplex said slowly, playing for time. He'd keep the little Autobot occupied until his gestaltmates arrived. "Several corridors and rooms near the outer hull have been short-circuited or torn open. Assistance would be appreciated."

First Aid had a very weird glint in his visor. "That's not an answer."

Because a straight answer was too quick. "My inner chambers are capable of full movement. Outer chambers and exterior subsystems are no longer functional, no."

"Yes. You'll need a lot of help to just repair your repair systems." The new Autobot Chief Medical Officer was referring to Metroplex's machine arms. Every room had at least three tucked away in various hatches, meant to assist the huge mech in accessing his interior in ways his rootmode's hand-size didn't allow. Most of those hatches and arms had either seized up or been destroyed during the Decepticon attack.

Metroplex noted that Hoist and Grapple had joined the migration toward First Aid's position. That was probably for the best. The little medic had an alarming twitch to his hands as he studied a schematic of the city, and Metroplex was very much afraid First Aid would do himself damage before someone arrived to stop him.

"You're willing to let us help you in every way possible?" It almost physically hurt the gigantic Autobot to hear First Aid say that. One of the most terrible things about war was the way it tore up the innocent, and the medic was the sweetest, most loving mech Metroplex had met in a long while. It wasn't _fair_ that he'd have a break down now!

"Of course," the cityformer rumbled, trying to soothe, aching with how much he cared.

There were transmissions being broadcast over the medical network that he politely didn't eavesdrop on, and hacking into a combiner team's private line was both difficult and rude. Still, he kind of wished he had done it when the Protectobots and Hoist and Grapple suddenly headed purposefully for damaged areas instead of here, where they were needed much more. Were they really going to start repairing _him_ when it was First Aid who so clearly needed the helping hands?

His concern amped up as the Autobots scattered throughout him started picking places to work. What kind of repairs required that kind of equipment? The other Autobots had to notice that their medic was off-balance if they were being ordered to bring out that kind of equipment. Metroplex had to get them to come find First Aid immediately.

The other Autobots ignored his insistent pings. Hmm. He'd use his speakers, but most of them were damaged. And he was a little afraid his voice wouldn't stay level enough to be taken seriously if Blades kept that up.

"We'll take good care of you," First Aid reassured him as he patted the closest wall. "I checked your records. It's been far too long since you've been overhauled, and Ultra Magnus put in a request log for intensive physical therapy psych-sessions for you **ages** ago. We'll do those first while you can't wriggle free and find a battle to fight for us." He sighed, looking a bit put-upon. "Your tendency toward neglecting your needs is well documented. Good thing I caught you like this, isn't it?"

...wait, what?

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**"It's lonely at the top (of the size range)****" **(Everyone in the house, party down!)

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

Metroplex couldn't have said that he'd ever really felt lonely, per se. As a cityformer, he'd always had a city commander. He'd always had mechs around or in him in some capacity or another. As part of the Autobots, he was considered an essential part of the war effort. He was certainly never ignored; the Autobots assigned to him were very well aware that he was a mech as well as a city.

The Autobots on Earth had actually been the best crew he'd ever had, in that sense.

Optimus Prime immediately included him in the command meetings, asking for input and aid directly instead of merely consulting with Ultra Magnus. That was something nobody had ever done before. Metroplex was intimidating and a mech of few words; most people preferred to speak with his city commander. Being addressed directly had actually been kind of unnerving. Metroplex had lived a long time, but he'd never been spoken too by a _Prime_ before.

When Prime went straight to Metroplex the first time, Ultra Magnus had responded to the cityformer's uncertainty by smiling. "Do you mind?"

"No." But he didn't want Ultra Magnus to resent him for speaking with the city commander's commander, and sometimes city commanders got possessive or felt that people were going over their heads by addressing the cityformer instead.

"Good," his current city commander said firmly, putting the worry to rest. "That frees up my time for other duties."

Those other duties being more administrative in nature. Moving to Earth had dumped a lot of responsibility on the city commander, but he'd delegated many of his previous intermediary duties when it became clear just how well the current crew worked with Metroplex.

Blaster had taken over the communication sector without a hitch. He'd immediately begun an extensive series of updates to the cityformer's admittedly outdated equipment. The day he'd chased Ultra Magnus around the city with a requisition list as long as he was tall had been one of the more entertaining days of Metroplex's existence. Ultra Magnus had suffered a mysterious plague of _'Comm. system failure, please stand by'_ errors and somehow didn't notice that Blaster was trying to corner him to sign off on the expensive upgrades. He'd authorized it eventually, of course, but he'd made the boombox Autobot work for it.

Red Alert all but crawled inside Metroplex's security systems and nested. The other Autobots joked that every new surveillance device was offspring hatched from the Security Director's jealously guarded domain. Metroplex and Red Alert ran with the joke, releasing a veritable flood of Red Alert-painted remote-control miniature Lamborghinis to patrol the corridors on April Fool's Day. Metroplex named every single one and chided multiple Autobots for nearly stepping on the 'twins' Safe and Secure. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had cracked up at that and taken to shepherding the bitty-twins around. The 'sons' (of the revenge of the return) of Metroplex's security systems had even beeped Morse code "Mommy!" when 'reporting' to Red Alert throughout the day, which had set everyone within audio-range to laughing.

…well, except for Inferno. Metroplex got the feeling Inferno had never forgiven him for that prank.

The other Autobots had actually taken it as some kind of sign that Metroplex was just 'one of the guys' and noticeably changed their behavior toward him. It was…odd, being treated like just another Autobot. Not bad, but Metroplex had nothing to compare it to. 'Odd' was the best word he could apply, here. The sheer variety of responses had been bewildering at first.

Ratchet had declared that if Metroplex were going to - voluntarily or not - observe his medbay at all times, then the cityformer could make himself useful and learn basic emergency care. It was the first time that anyone had ever offered to teach him. Sure, there were downloads available, but there was a vast difference between downloaded knowledge and actually practicing touching such tiny, precious little mechs' damage under an experienced medic's watchful optics. Handing the medic tools and helping patch minor wounds with his machine arms had been an incredible balm on the cityformer's guilt the first time the other Autobots returned from a battle he himself couldn't join.

First Aid talked to him periodically, just letting him know that he was aware the cityformer was with him every klik of the day. Bluestreak did that too, directing nonstop chatter to the ceiling, but the medic also periodically hugged corners and doorframes. That was nice. Unexpected, but nice.

The other Protectobots had attempted to smother him in well-meant comfort the first time the Decepticons tried attacking Autobot City. That was back before construction had completed, and Metroplex had transformed to defend the structure. Megatron had retreated, being no fool, but Metroplex had emerged from the fight sporting scorch marks, rubble in awkward areas, and bent antenna. The Protectobots had arrived soon after, and that had been the cityformer's introduction to exactly what the 'disaster relief' part of their duties actually meant.

It'd been the Protectobots' introduction to a disaster area that talked back, too, and First Aid had been forced to intervene when they wouldn't believe Metroplex's repeated, "I'm fine."

"It's just that, well, you're alive. We're worried. We don't look at torn-up ground and punched-in walls quite the same as you do," Hot Spot had explained sheepishly. The fire truck had fidgeted. "…are you sure you're okay?"

First Aid had put his face in his hands and started to explain the difference between nerve sensor networks and awareness sensor networks yet again, but right then Blades had bellowed, "Dear Primus, he's missing a whole fragging door up here!"

Metroplex had patiently repeated himself about forty more times as the Protectobots descended into concerned twittering once more. They'd settled down eventually, but the cityformer still caught them occasionally petting the places he'd taken damage. He couldn't tell if they were checking up on him or were still worried that he'd somehow been scarred for life.

Blurr and Wheeljack were apparently out to outwit his interior sensors, in their own separate ways. Blurr tried to outrace active zones, speeding in and out of online areas of the city until Metroplex got a barrier up in time to stop him, then blazing off in a new direction. The game would go on until the cityformer finally cut off all his escape routes. It was like some bizarre form of tag. Wheeljack just kept inventing new and stranger methods of bypassing his sensors entirely. That was an interesting and combat-applicable goal most of the time, as was foiling the engineer's efforts, but Metroplex still wasn't sure he believed filling Corridor 18-B with packing peanuts had been strictly for science.

The Aerialbots claimed Blaster's transmission tower as their perch of choice when they weren't at the _Ark_. Metroplex obligingly asked Hoist and Grapple to modify the floor below Blaster's communication deck to make it suitable for jets. That led to endless squabbles and pushing each other off the launch pad when the flock of flyers visited, but it also led to movie nights with the combiner team. The Aerialbots were determined to include him in _everything_ pop culture here on Earth, which meant viewing the great cinematic accomplishments of the past 100 years. At least, 'great' as according to the widely divergent tastes of the Aerialbots. That meant six hour blocks of time at a time devoted to arguing loudly over what actor was a total hack, why silent movies were wonderful (Skydive) or the most boring thing in the history of ever (everyone else), and what did Metroplex think of being Superman's new Fortress of Solitude?

Ultra Magnus asked him one time if he wanted the city commander to ban them from the premises for annoying him, but Metroplex only laughed. The cityformer had once observed a group of fifteen starlings all try to land on the same six inches of power wire strung between his transformation joins. The resulting explosion of fussing and chirping had ended in a line of birds stacked nearly on top of each other, tiny feathered fluffballs cuddled together. He'd never told anyone, but that was exactly what the Aerialbots and their frenetic antics reminded him of. At the end of every movie night, there were five disgruntled mechs recharging in a sprawl that somehow managed to fit on the tower's one battered couch, and Metroplex thought they were _so slagging cute_. Lookit their little wings! And the tailfins! Just…lookit! D'awww.

The other Autobots were sometimes just as cute. Hot Rod and Daniel drove through his corridors, crazy and reckless, and Kup ran hot on their wheels. Metroplex helped whatever mech asked first, which was often Prowl because Kup got too stubborn and the terrible duo thought it was cheating to escape via Deux Ex Metroplex. Prowl just wanted them all to shut the frag up and let him have some peace and quiet. There were times Metroplex pretended he couldn't hear Prowl's requests, just to listen to laughter ricocheting down the halls a short while longer.

Jazz and Mirage and Bumblebee stalked each other through the ducts and rooms, challenging Metroplex and Red Alert to make their spy games more difficult. Red Alert set traps. Metroplex transformed entire sectors just to shake them up. Hearing dignified, aloof Mirage swear like a dockworker after getting locked into a storage locker made his entire week. Catching Jazz full in the face with a firecracker made Red Alert's. Bumblebee won the unofficial competition by somehow dodging not only both the other SpecOps mechs but also the horde of mini-Red Alert remote-control cars sent after him.

There were humans galore running rampant, and Springer and Arcee courting each other everywhere, and Minibots bungee-jumping down his lift shafts for the sheer fun of it, and Metroplex couldn't have said that he'd felt lonely before Earth.

He hadn't known that's what he felt until after it went away.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**"Caretaker****"** (Party until the lights go out!)

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

The fingers weren't as nimble. They shook, and the backs of the hands were blotchy with liver spots.

The eyes weren't as sharp. Thick glasses had been made even thicker. Surgery had taken away the cataracts, but they still squinted in near-blindness.

The body wasn't as strong. It had always been crippled, relying on a wheelchair to get around, but now the arms couldn't always push the wheels.

Chip Chase had aged well, considering.

Decepticon invasions, Megatron and Galvatron, hostage situations, and running for his life on alien planets. Yes, Chip had done pretty well. As far as lives went, he'd had one worth talking about. He wasn't the kind to lie down and die, and asking him to move into a retirement home was actually kind of insulting when cast in that light.

The old man only patted his niece's hand one papery-skinned hand. "I like it here," he said to her with a denture-filled smile, and she pouted back at him.

She was a smart woman, however. Even as she sat beside her elderly uncle, a machine arm snuck out of the wall and put a plastic cup full of his pills on the tray his lunch had been set on. The meal had been reheated cafeteria-style food, pre-packaged and delivered to the city before being reheated and served. It was uninspired, but Uncle Chip hadn't seemed to notice as he'd chewed and swallowed in that plodding, patient pace she recognized from her mother's own mealtimes. Food was fuel. It required concentration, not necessarily pleasure.

The tray had slid out of a slot in the wall with a loud authoritative _bleep_, the kind of alarm noise that warned it would continue until Mr. Chase ate. It'd been the kind of alarm that took no excuses. _Eat, Mr. Chase._

Now the plastic cup sat there, waiting with that same stern injunction. _Your medication, Mr. Chase_.

Chip's niece really looked at the room, at the spill of half-drawn blueprints and the scent of fresh solder. Most men Chip Chase's age would have retired to a sunny porch, their working days ended by the palsy that shook their hands. Instead, everywhere through the room was strewn evidence of a working man. Machine arms tidied the stacks of circuitboards. Tools were racked on the walls. Through the open bedroom door, the bed was neatly made. The linens looked crisp and fresh.

Was a retirement home the answer? She had gone to tour the retirement home her mother was considering. It had been airy and full of light, but even through the smell of rose air freshener and frequent cleaning, the halls had smelled of tiredness and age. Intellectual stimulation began and ended at group outings to local shopping centers, or gatherings in the common areas of the buildings.

The body had deteriorated, not the mind.

So she pouted, but she spent the rest of her visit chatting with him about her work in the flying car business. As always, he was extremely interested. New technology always interested him. It was good to talk with someone who understood what she was going on about, too.

When she left, she laid a hand on the wall outside her uncle's door and said calmly, "Take care of him. I love him very much."

"So do we," Metroplex rumbled back.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**"Companion & '****Trypticon, jealous'****" **(Party with the people!)

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

Metroplex didn't want to be like Trypticon. No, never, not even close. The Decepticon fortress-former was insane on a good day and a hot mess the rest of the time. Why would anyone with a crumb of sense want to be like _that_? Who wanted to imitate a mech who got shot at by his own side?

Not Metroplex, certainly.

…not much.

Trypticon was a bully, a slob, and Metroplex's mortal enemy. He also sort of, might of, kind of had thought of something first, and now Metroplex wanted what he'd thought up.

Every cityformer had a commander. It was necessary when a mech was the size of, well, a city. Fortress-formers got commanders, too. They were harder to control, and sometimes the commander was more of a dangerous accessory than a controller or aid, but fortress-formers all had a commander running around somewhere.

What Trypticon had acquired - and what Metroplex was most certainly not envious of, nope - was a companion.

Commanders gave orders. They acted as mediators and intermediaries. It was their duty. Metroplex knew that Ultra Magnus was required to help him, just as it was his duty to obey the city commander in turn. It stung something bitter in him.

Not that Ultra Magnus was wrong; Metroplex knew that duty always came first. But Ultra Magnus would someday be reassigned. He would move on to different commands. Metroplex would get another commander. The only other option was that Ultra Magnus would die in the line of duty, and that was a horrible thought that made the bitterness gag him.

Duty among the Autobots would make Ultra Magnus stay until death instead of worry about his own life. Duty among the Decepticons wasn't nearly so strict, but once a commander fled, he wouldn't dare return for fear of reprisal, accusations of cowardice, and death.

A companion, however…a companion wasn't part of the hierarchy. A companion had to have enough concern for his own life to run away, and enough attachment to the cityformer to return afterward. A companion was outside the normal faction structure. He'd last longer that way.

Trypticon had Octane. Metroplex had no idea how that had come about. He only knew that the Decepticon refugee still fretted about the fortress-former and occasionally slipped away for clandestine meetings out off the coast of Africa. Concerned, Metroplex had brought up the meetings with Ultra Magnus, only to be told that Octane really wasn't considered a threat. A nuisance and not a neutral, but not a threat, either. Octane just…missed Trypticon.

And considering the fact that Trypticon kept lurking around Africa despite repeated orders from Chaar to return, it seemed the attachment was mutual.

Metroplex couldn't imagine Ultra Magnus doing the same. Frag, he couldn't picture himself doing it.

So. A companion. Someone self-centered enough to save his own armor, but without a steady connection already in place. Selfish but with the potential to settle.

It was more difficult to find someone to fit those specifications than anticipated. Autobots had a tendency toward selflessness, and even those who were selfish seemed to already have a cadre of close friends. Metroplex needed someone set newly adrift. And, of course, he needed to win that mech over somehow.

In the meantime, he watched Octane pal around with the new Autobots from Paradron and tried to contain his envy. He was not jealous of Trypticon. Octane was _here_, inside _Metroplex_, and Octane was flirting with a rotary instead of flitting off to meet Trypticon. Metroplex felt a little smug because even he knew Sandstorm was just using the Decepticon refugee as a fling. Sandstorm seemed determined to be attached to everyone at some point or another, yet make no attachments at all. Commitment was anathema to the Paradronian, and that was probably why Octane liked him so much.

Or maybe not. The Decepticon and the Paradronian Autobot really were spending a lot of time. Maybe Trypticon would be out a companion soon, hmm?

Metroplex watched, and felt smug, and was so busy trying not to feel jealous when Octane flew off to Africa that he didn't even notice the wistful way Sandstorm watched the triple-changer go. Or, for that matter, the oddly thoughtful - and then frankly acquisitive - look the little Autobot immediately turned on _him_.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**"Size before beauty****" **(Party by yourself, shhh…)

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

Metroplex knew what a 'size kink' was. He was a cityformer; he had a target all but painted on his aft for that particular fetish.

For the most part, it didn't bother him. Really, it didn't. He'd had two or three actual lovers in his time, but they'd all been regular-sized mechs. Both Optimus and Rodimus Prime had offered, but Metroplex had honestly been too nervous to accept. He'd been afraid that the Matrix might actually succeed in a full-system overload, and once he experienced that…it was already somewhat frustrating to only be able to interface sectors instead of his whole body.

Ultra Magnus occasionally interfaced with him, as had all his city commanders. It was part of the duty, written in because Metroplex's designers had been no fools and knew that the life of an enormous frametype could be unbearably lonely sometimes. The human had it in most of their fairytales: the giants ostracized from the rest of the world became reclusive, grouchy, and even evil. Ratchet, Hoist, and First Aid had all dutifully linked into him as well, but his best and most frequent overloads, by far, were from the fetish mechs.

Seriously, he was some kind of magnet for kinks. The mechs who wanted to be engulfed by their lovers; the ones who wanted to be treated like drones or furniture; the ones who wanted to be held down and totally helpless; the ones with body part attractions who could overload from the sheer presence of their chosen body part, supersized. There was something about Metroplex that drew the kinky Autobots in, and that was just fine. The cityformer took his enjoyment from many kinds of interfacing, and making someone happy was always fun.

It always came back to his size, in a way. Which, again, was fine. Some mechs loved that feeling of being tiny. Metroplex wasn't just small - he was _enormous_. It had been somewhat surprising when the first gestalt approached him, but it made sense. The Autobot combiner teams were so used to feeling mighty when they conjoined that Metroplex's overwhelming size became an opportunity for powerplay no one else could offer. Superion liked to be handled by giant hands, just feeling the amount of surface contact all at once. Defensor wanted to be cradled close and protected. Computron wanted his databanks blown in one fell swoop, processors shut down by Metroplex's superior capacity.

Metroplex gave them what they needed. He didn't really understand most of their fetishes, but he didn't mind. It had taken him until 1984, Earth local time, to truly _get_ the size kink thing, and he figured that he owed others the benefit of a doubt.

Because in 1984, Metroplex had seen the footage of Unicron's attack on Cybertron, and _Primus save him_. Unicron was ugly. He was the Unmaker, the Destroyer, the anathema of life. Metroplex knew all that, just as he knew that the God of Chaos would swat him aside and kill him without a thought.

That didn't stop the cityformer from disappearing into the Sahara Desert to create a lake of glass from melted sand the moment he could transform again.

Size kink from the other side was not something he'd had experience with, and discovering he had it bad had knocked him for a loop. Metroplex was a cityformer. Unicron was an entire slagging planet. Metroplex could perch on his shoulder. Unicron could cage him in one hand. The Unmaker could _eat_ him in two bites, and _guuuh_ that thought alone had overloaded him hard enough to flash-melt the sand even before he landed. This wasn't healthy in any way, but he couldn't stop the surges of current when he thought about it.

He put in subtle suggestions for archiving the memory files of the Autobots involved in the final fight against Unicron. Just in case of future problems. For history, right?

He wanted them. Oh, yes, please and thank you. Bumblebee getting consumed would create an entire glass _ocean_ if he got those files, oh please oh please, let him have those files. He was going to have to ask for more time off if he did, and that was going to create questions, but he didn't care. He couldn't care.

In the meantime, First Aid and Ultra Magnus looked curious but acquiesced to his request for more frequent interfacing.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**"****Metroplex: origin - coming online as a cityformer****" **(Get the party started!)

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

It's all very confusing at first, life is. The systems booted in order, but that order varied on their sectors. His core booted its processors first, but then the security programs around his exterior regions immediately began sending in information as they kicked in. Then came the interior sensors, and he was full of _life_. The little things scurrying about inside him were magnified a thousandfold in the utter industrial chaos his exterior sensors began telling him about, and there were more of the little living what's-its crawling on him. There were a hundred thousand sensors suddenly reporting, and it made a certain kind of sense, at least to his data banks, but Metroplex could only sit there trying to _think_ for a while.

"Sky," he rumbled, abruptly aware of the star-spangled darkness in a mind-boggling arch above him. That was one thing his sensors weren't telling him about in tiny detail, although a sensor suite pinged him asking if he _wanted_ it to. He hastily turned it off and directed his optics upward to look at space. It was very big, and except for the occasional flying metal creature, it was very peaceful. That was pleasant, except that looking at it made him aware that he wasn't looking through optics. Not optics. Security cameras? But they registered as _'__Optical sensors, Citymode,'_ and oooh, he had a bipedal mode! Except, wait, that meant he wasn't bipedal right now, and why had he assumed that, anyway?

The cameras turned toward himself, trying to see what exactly he was. There was every form of mechanical being running about inside and out, in a hundred different shapes and a thousand different colors. All he saw of himself was…a wall. He zoomed out, and zoomed out again, but he just couldn't place what he was seeing.

There was a tiny creature - a 'mech,' some part of him dredged up as a label - welding on a wall. Eventually, he made the connection that the zinging burn he felt in one sector was the stinging heat of a welding torch. Even after that, it took a while to actually wind his way around to realizing that the mech was welding on _him_. The wall was _him_. It wasn't that it wasn't obvious once he figured it out, but it was rather difficult to narrow down one sensation among the millions currently registering and figure out how visual and sensor data were meant to work together. He could see the mech welding, he could feel the welding torch, but it didn't quite click that the two things were somehow related.

After even longer, it occurred to him that the sensor data probably meant that welding hurt. Not a lot, but magnify that by the mech's entire workcrew and the crews banging and building and scrabbling about inside him, and Metroplex was surprised to add it up to a significant amount of pain. "Ow," he said experimentally.

Oops. It'd come out from a speaker tucked away in one of his rooms deep inside. And, hey, he had rooms! Interesting.

Part of him became immensely distracted by a series of schematics pulling themselves up automatically when he made a query about his speaker system. Oh, goodness, he was a very large…well, what was he? The schematics were labeled _Prototype Alpha-Class Cityformer, Dual Transformation Type; Designation: Metroplex_, so he knew the blueprints were of him. He was Metroplex. He could transform? Bipedal mode, right, which meant that he had to be in his other mode at the moment, which was a…cityformer? That would explain the walls, wouldn't it? And the rooms, of course. He had lots of hallways, too. Corridors? What as the proper terminology for his internal structure? There were scribbled engineer notes with sixty different signatures throughout the schematics, and the notes all referred to his structure using different terms depending on who had written them.

It was all terribly distracting, but the part of him that had initially asked for the speaker system data traced the correct connection this time. He adjusted his volume, carefully judging how the amount of pain should be reacted to.

"**Ow,"** he said, loud and clear right beside the welder he'd first noticed, and felt very pleased with himself for figuring out how he should react.

Until the welder fell off his perch, clutching his audios in shock. Everyone in the area looked shocked, in fact, and they were chattering sounds that Metroplex was having trouble making sense of because there was just _so much_ information. They were all holding their heads, however, and he had the sinking feeling that maybe he'd done something wrong. Too loud, perhaps?

"I apologize," he whispered, but nobody reacted, so maybe he'd been too quiet this time around. Some of them seemed to be in pain, though, so he kept silent to let them calm down. Could sheer volume hurt people? The little mechs were apparently fragile. Um. This could be tricky.

It did make him aware of the noises, which resolved into words as his linguistic databanks booted up, and he wanted to ask the workcrew to repeat what they'd said so he could understand them this time, but the words they were currently spouting - well, he certainly didn't want _that_ repeated.

There were lots of words being said elsewhere, anyway, so he listened to those. It was all interesting in different ways. He was fascinated by the work group interactions, and the pain was worth listening to the workers talk about what they were doing or what they'd done last orn. And, eventually, an insistent group of mechs near his core finally caught his attention. Mostly because a nagging uplink kept pinging him, and it didn't seem happy to just take the automatic system responses.

Again, it took him a little while to make the connection between seeing a group of mechs standing in a room and hearing the words coming through his audio sensors in a room and the uplink coming from the console in a room. The three things floated through his sensor suites as if occupying separate rooms before a nudge of system synchronization finally snapped them together like layers in a digital picture.

"Metroplex, are you online?" one mech said, and the uplink from another pinged him, and yet another mech was tapping at his camera as if trying to get his attention.

"Yes," he whispered after painstakingly finding the right speaker. "I am online."

They all seemed to relax at once. "That's a relief," one grumbled. "You weren't responding."

He thought about that, curious as to what was meant by it. "There are many things to respond to," he stated after a moment. "What did you wish me to respond to first?" Maybe there was some kind of priority list that he hadn't found yet. "I apologize if I overlooked something in my initial sweep. I currently have 189,572 sensors functioning," a ping, "ah, that is, 189,583 sensors, as Sector 54-B workcrews have finished installing the pressure sensor under a section of my floor paneling. Which sensor did you wish me to respond to?"

Mouths opened and closed all around the room. Metroplex wondered if his audio sensors were malfunctioning, because he didn't hear anything coming out.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** Party in the City Tonight, Pt. 2

**Warnings**: Mentions of trust and betrayal

**Rating:** PG

**Continuity:** G1, IDW

**Characters:** Metroplex, Autobots

**Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn't own the script or actors (or scenery), nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt):** Metroplex character party

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**[* * * * *]**

**"I'll keep you safe" **(Police crash the party)

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* * *

Metroplex had been built for stability. For support. He was meant to be the structure for the living organism that dwelled inside city walls. He was a shell.

His city commander was meant to be the head of the beast. Metroplex was meant to focus on defense and shelter, and his city commander was meant to control all the details required to sustain a lifeform the size of a city. Metroplex did a good job, maybe because he'd been built for his duties. His city commanders, however, had not always fulfilled their duties as well. Perhaps because they hadn't been built for it. Perhaps because the duties were rather overwhelming. Perhaps because, despite the comparison, the city living inside Metroplex's walls was not a cohesive creature. Perhaps the task had been impossible to begin with.

Metroplex had run the excuses through, but the truth was probably simpler. More brutal, but simpler.

A city was a city, and it was made of mechs. The only difference between a cityformer and a regular city was that the walls were alive, too. Building codes were strict and non-negotiable, but that could be said of downtown Iacon, too. Metroplex and his first city commander had set out the complex non-living city structure that Metroplex transformed into the core of, and the construction grid had to remain unchanged no matter who leased the building or plot. Beyond that, Metroplex had no governance over those who lived in him or his superstructure. That had often led to fascinating liberties taken within the grid, but the cityformer was mostly intrigued by the architecture. Well, except for the bright pink and safety-hazard orange place. He didn't have much opinion on building aesthetics, but that had been a bit much even for him.

The point was that the Senate Enforcers were just as active in him as elsewhere. His city commander occasionally had to have words with them when they got trigger-happy and damaged his walls, in fact. Metroplex was a shell and a watcher, but he didn't…_interfere_. Governance was left to his city commander, who in turn bowed to the current politicians. That chain of command was likely where the problems began.

Broken down to the terms of an economics spreadsheet, Metroplex was a particularly expensive city structure, like the waste disposal system in Iacon or the air filtration stations in Kaon. In the spreadsheets, he became nothing more than a piece of equipment. When the Senators looked at him, they saw a dense population of mechs sitting on top of a fiscal nightmare. And, like all such entries in the budget, he was fought over without consideration for what the nitpicking did to him.

It all came down to politics. Simple, brutal politics of money and people. Metroplex became a pet project of accountants, ever-seeking to trim more money away. The Senator with the cheapest accountant would win the floor of the Senate for a klik, and that klik translated to ten, even fifteen orns of political power. And, suddenly, the current city commander would be transferred away, and Metroplex would have another mech giving him orders.

He didn't blame his city commanders. He knew, although he didn't want to, what he was worth in monetary and political terms. The city commanders rarely remained more than a deca-vorn at a time, and they were endlessly stressed as they tried to follow the orders of their political masters, but some of them got to know him. Not for long, and mostly out of sheer necessity, but sometimes they even talked.

"There are areas I can shut off from use," Metroplex offered when one of those city commander grew too stressed, too unable to handle the job.

"I don't know if that would help at this point," the mech said back, head in his hands as he pored over the latest impossible demands from his Senator. It hurt Metroplex to see his city commanders suffer like this, even knowing that power-greed motivated them. When one was a city, the little amount of person-to-person interaction one received became precious. Even if that interaction was with a political puppet. "It's worth a try, I suppose."

So they shut off the second quadrant, carefully choking off the sensor stations and grid lines until the fuel and energy went elsewhere. Metroplex cordoned off the buildings, letting them rust as the tiny maintenance systems went into statis and stopped fighting off the ever-corrosive acid rain.

It helped, a little. Not enough, and the city commander was reassigned.

It'd been registered as a possible tactic for saving money, however, and that's when the real downward spiral started. Where one quadrant went to rust, another followed. The buildings went into disrepair. The zoning laws became lax. Metroplex became less able to watch for trespassers and vagrants. Entire areas were blacked out in his sensors. The Enforcers had more difficulty finding petty criminals in the abandoned areas. Then they had more trouble finding major criminals, too. A whole black market started in the rusted buildings, hidden from the Enforcers and the city itself. Thieves and murderers ducked into the ruins to disappear, and what could anyone do?

Cybertron was changing as the politics shifted. Enforcers came and went, and the laws shifted as quickly as the new mechs in the ranks. The Senators kept cutting the budget. The accountants found new corners to cut. The city commanders came, they made their demands, and they left again.

Metroplex withdrew.

What else could he do? When the city commanders began commanding from outside his walls, communication became much more difficult. He wasn't sure, but sometimes he thought the mechs weren't even aware he _was_ the city, not just some subordinate to be ordered about on-site. And…honestly, it was becoming easier to not fight. The operational protocols he'd come online were woefully obsolete at this point, but he still couldn't rouse much more than half-sparked arguments when issued orders that made no sense. There were city commanders who actually yelled at him, although he noted that they were rarely the ones who showed up for dutyshifts inside him.

It was painfully easy to see he'd stopped being a person to his city commanders. He'd long since stopped being one to the Senate, but apparently there was something about seeng walls instead of another face that just didn't make him _real_ to the mechs sent to command him anymore. He was meant to obey his city commander, yes, but he was supposed to work with him. He wasn't supposed to be the one concerned about the day-to-day existence of the mechs living in him; that was another job, and that job wasn't his. So when the yelling and accusations started, he silently withdrew into himself.

One orn, the head of the Enforcers came knocking on his city commander's office door. There was no one there currently, but Metroplex had started assuming more of the everyday duties when it became obvious no one else would do it. Anyway, right now he was between city commanders while the Senate dithered over sending the next victim to be disfavored. Metroplex felt a certain kind of weariness for the cycle, these days. While his protocols were uneasy without a name in the city commander slot, he'd found he didn't mind the time alone.

He slid open the door and brought up the lights. "How may I assist you, officer?"

The grizzled old clank had seen better times. He'd been assigned to Metroplex because nobody else wanted the position, so far as the cityformer could tell. "I'm here to issue an eviction notice," the old mech had said, optics peering curiously about the empty office. "There has been lack of payment for the lease to the Chanting Quadrant, and I've been sent to issue an eviction notice for the resident."

Another eviction notice? How depressing, but not surprising. The evictions had been coming up regularly as the residents of the city grew more transient and less able - or willing - to stay past a few periods of rent. Metroplex had all the records, but resident registration had been growing sporadic at best. He had to look the lease up. Did he even have the rental files for that? A lease on an entire quadrant was more of a Senate land issue than local real estate record, considering the size of the plot. What kind of -

Shame swept through him like a hot waterfall.

"Sir, I am the resident," he said, whispering so quietly the sound barely made it to the Enforcer.

Who stared. At nothing much, really, because there was no way to stare at a cityformer without pretty much just looking at a wall. "You."

Metroplex tore through the records, trying to find when the lease had been signed, who had filled out the rental period, who had been paying all this time, _where had the money gone..?_

The city commanders. Of course.

"Yes, sir," he said helplessly as the lines and lines of unforgiving _Unpaid_, _Overdue_, and _Last Notice_ came up on messages that had never been his responsibility. They'd been sent to him, once every quarter vorn, and his automatic message systems had forwarded them dutifully to the city commanders. Who hadn't been paying, because the money was gone. Taken away for other projects, other needs, and they had never been assigned long enough to face the consequences.

The Senate had stripped their pet project down and forgotten about it. A hundred vorns of disappearing from the books had finally reached their inevitable conclusion. Metroplex had politically disappeared. Now all that remained was his physical presence, and here the officer was to deal with that.

"I…I apologize," Metroplex fumbled, trying to turn up a single credit that hadn't been spent from the current budget. "How many orns am I being given?" Evicted tenants typically were allowed three orns to relocate before being forcibly removed from the premises, but he didn't know if he was physically capable of moving that quickly. The connections were mostly dead, but the actual transformation points that had connected him into the city as its core hadn't been maintained in _vorns_. Could he even transform anymore?

Oh, Primus, where could he go even if he could? Were there unclaimed areas of Cybertron he could stay on, or would he have to leave the planet entirely?

Panic boiled up from his spark, and the cityformer shook.

A hand unexpectedly touched his office wall, and Metroplex refocused. The Enforcer was still staring, but sympathy had separate tired rings of light in his optic lenses. "Kid, I'm not going to evict you. I," he hesitated, a weird look of bitter wonder crossing his face, "you know, I doubt most mechs even remember you're alive. So you…you hide, alright? You disappear into the city like one of the bums down by the dead areas, and nobody's gonna come looking for you. This whole city's almost off the map. Give it a couple hundred more vorn, and that lease'll be nothing anyone'll give you grief over."

Unspoken was the fact that most of the bums vanished into the dead areas to slowly deactivate. They ran down into statis. They died. And someone came by later to cannibalize the parts, because at some point, it had become an accepted method of survival on Cybertron.

It wasn't like Metroplex really had a choice anymore. There was so little energon being issued to him that it was about the only option he had left, in any case. Eviction, or…well. The Senate had long ago stopped taking into account that he wasn't a machine that could shut off parts of itself indefinitely.

Metroplex shut off the sensor stations, then the energy grid. The fuel left in the lines was usually suctioned off from the previously-blocked areas left to rust, anyway, so he capped off his own tubes entirely to prevent the thieves from siphoning away from him. Communication and monitoring equipment turned off. He shut off the lights, locked the doors, and sent his drones to heap useless scrap not even the scavengers would sift through outside his exits. When a new city commander was eventually assigned, there was no way in, and no way to tell anyone would have reason to. Metroplex had become just one more complex left to turn to rubble and junk in the middle of a derelict city.

Scamper, Six-Gun, and Slammer wordlessly did as they were told. The spark of sentience that had been meant to develop in them as time passed had all but guttered out. Metroplex wanted to feel bad about that, but it was for the best that they had never become aware enough to know. Instead of wandering his halls, awake and alone, he nestled them close to his core systems and let them shut down into energy-conservation.

Then the cityformer settled down, patient as his walls and afraid all the same, to wait for the end.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**"See no evil, hear no evil"**(Who's gonna clean this mess up?)

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* * *

The dreams were unexpected, but not unwelcome. They passed the time, if nothing else. Or rather, they made him remember that time was passing. It was difficult for his systems to access his chronometer from statis, and he felt more than a bit apathetic about trying.

Just because he'd been left to rust didn't mean he wanted to be conscious of that fact. He sought oblivion.

The dreams, however; the dreams were persistent. They followed him into statis and lingered there, like memories on repeat or bad data purges. They pulled his attention, and he couldn't stop them. He wasn't sure he wanted to. He wasn't sure he should.

His receivers crawled with static and atmospheric charge as the weather shifted. The acid rained down, seeping through the wreckage of his outer city grid, and the tiny pains of old sensors ghosted where he hadn't fully disconnected. Antenna quivered in rain and wind, the systems stung temporarily up from shut-down, and transmissions came through in garbled blurts.

_"The Senate's decision on the mines…increased illegal activity in Kaon…unsavory elements among the lesser mechs…elitist classism disguised as a representative government…black market weaponry from off-world suppliers…those who attend the gladiator matches are culpable for…"_

The solar panels that had been disguised as unsalvageable scrap on his upper heights became coated with grime, the acid-proof surfaces pitting and scoring as Cybertron's weather turned. Wind-driven rust scoured the surfaces from transparent to translucent, reducing clear starlight to milky leftovers through the tough coverings. The steady, if small, source of energy trickled down to dribbles on clear days.

Those days were becoming infrequent. Always, now, there were clouds and smog. Windstorms drove loose nuts and bolts in among the rust, breaking unsheltered bulbs and leaving burst lights and darkness in their wake. The black of space stretched out where there had once been passing stars, and there were no new lights to counter the lack. Just clouds and acid rain, red-orange grit and scouring wind, and the dense accumulation of dingy gray over every shining surface.

Even if he'd been online, there would have been nothing to see but a ruined landscape and roiling skyline. His dreams darkened, weak and influenced by the lack of power and light, and the transmissions kept coming.

_"…enforcement of curfew in selected cities…arrests without cause, and now they're dismissed as 'missing' when there are witnesses claiming…military law by order of the Senate for the protection of all citizens…blatant inequalities…citizens are encouraged to lodge complaints through their Senators' offices…corrupt government no longer listens to reason…legitimate, legal means…blocked and sabotaged by politics…action will be taken against those protestors who...violence is our only recourse…deadly force is authorized…we must **rise up**, we must **retake**…repression of this rogue faction must be swift, else this subversion spread…their rhetoric has nothing but inertia to support it…arrest their leader and behead the rebels…a swift blow to their…they will collapse…we will not give in…now is the time to…"_

Time passed. The static crawled. The weather worsened and the smoke rose, until all the sky turned to ash and charcoal. The entire world degraded into storms and starvation. The transmissions kept coming, erratic and disturbing, and the voices riding the sporadic radio waves grew ever more urgent.

He heard nothing. He saw nothing. Yet deep in statis, abandoned and alone, Metroplex dreamt of Cybertron.

In his dreams, war was coming.

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**"Moving Day****" **(Alright, move this party elsewhere.)

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There were things Metroplex kept hidden. It wasn't that he didn't tell Ultra Magnus everything so much as there was _so much_ to tell that some information just got lost in transit.

The city commander was a reserved mech himself, but he often got the feeling that the cityformer was holding back. Sometimes the drones weren't around for days, and Metroplex only gave vague answers about their whereabouts when queried. Ultra Magnus didn't push, because drones were the cityformer's business and not necessary to his own command. He commanded a legion of Autobot engineers and technicians and soldiers, and that was enough. Three drones, powerful though they were, were left to Metroplex. It wasn't like the cityformer ever asked for anything else.

In fact, he rarely said much at all beyond an official capacity. Ultra Magnus had never really spoken to Metroplex outside of their roles as city commander and cityformer, which was odd when he thought about it. The two offices were hardly as hierarchy as one might think by the titles. A cityformer needed an intermediary, and the rank of city commander didn't actually command so much as stand equal. The official conversations they had were decidedly strange, in that light. Ultra Magnus was meant to interpret the cityformer's needs and convey them to the rest of Cybertron, and that didn't work so well when the only things he knew Metroplex needed were new paneling in Sector 3 and a better filtertrap near his cooling system pump. That was like a torture victim going to the medbay and only talking about the physical damage.

The cityformer had been alone a long, long time. That kind of isolation did things to people. Even huge people. Ultra Magnus had been assigned this rank with a warning that the duty called for more than just his presence. This was a long-term project to restore something the Senate had done great damage to. Underneath the formal lingo, that meant healing a person who'd been left to die.

Maybe he wasn't an outgoing mech, but Ultra Magnus was also not a cold-sparked one. He had empathy, he had a duty, and he would not turn his back on that responsibility no matter how difficult.

The smaller mech walked the dim corridors and closed-off sectors with the care of a psychologist approaching a new patient, checking for areas that called for further exploration. There were doors that didn't open, but Metroplex supplied a reason every time. Some doors had rusted shut, and Ultra Magnus immediately prioritized those for instant attention from the engineers. Rust on a living mech was a severe health issue. Other doors led from Metroplex to the remnants of the city he'd once been part of. They no longer served a purpose, as the corresponding corridors and rooms had long since been leveled or collapsed. They could be unsealed later, at some undetermined date when Metroplex became the core of another city.

There was one door, however, that Metroplex hid. The city commander's office had mysteriously disappeared.

For all that Metroplex's construction had been a highly-publicized project for the Senate, the actual files for the cityformer had long ago vanished into the bureaucratic muddle. The blueprints forwarded to the engineers were…difficult to read. They were highly technical but out of order, and Ultra Magnus' suspicions grew the longer it took to sort through them. Metroplex's polite, detached narration of past events skirted around certain topics when Ultra Magnus asked for more information. He'd answer if the question was specific enough, but it was like trying to talk to a particularly obtuse databank instead of a living being.

Ultra Magnus didn't have a map of the cityformer, and it was difficult to navigate the massive cityformer without one. Of any type, really. The lack of history made navigation far more complicated than mere physical directions. There were facts, but nothing personal to back them up. Ultra Magnus walked the corridors, but he felt like an invader in a puzzletrap, not a city commander at his post. His rightful place felt like it'd been imposed upon Metroplex, and between duties stretched long pauses filled with awkward silence.

They were two not-exactly-personable mechs, stuck together. Ultra Magnus was an Autobot. Metroplex had agreed to be one as well. The city commander has his reasons, although discussion of them would be stiff and very, very stilted so as to not delve into private issues. The cityformer…Ultra Magnus had not questioned his reasoning. Perhaps out of respect for privacy, but also out of a growing unease as he walked the halls and saw the damage. Everywhere, he felt the cool, impassive regard of someone who was supposed to be his partner. There were a lot of causes to follow into the Autobot ranks, and survival was an entirely plausible one.

Perhaps Ultra Magnus would, for a while, have to take the lead. Maybe he had to take command just to show the cityformer the way. There were many reasons to be an Autobot, if only there were a reason to contemplate them. The Autobot had the feeling that the cityformer would be typical of his frametype if Ultra Magnus could just win his loyalty, even his friendship. Metroplex could be stable, steady, and a bastion of protection, if only he had a reason to _commit_.

The air of waiting haunted the halls, however, as thick as rust and resignation on the floors. Metroplex had no trust left to commit to any one mech, much less a faction of many. Autobot or Decepticon - who cared? The Autobots had simply gotten to him first. He had accepted Ultra Magnus' assignment as his city commander without any real emotion, as if this were one more turn around the cycle he had to endure.

The lights came on one by one. The paneling was replaced and polished up. The rust ground away, the sensors reactivated, and Metroplex became, once again, a city instead of a ruin. But Ultra Magnus still kept walking, searching for the hidden things: memories, broken trust, and a door.

Somewhere in the enormous labyrinth of corridors and old betrayals, there was a door he had to find.

There was a room behind it. Someday, Ultra Magnus might be allowed to move in.

* * *

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**"Routine Maintenance****" **(House party, but do houses party?)

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First Aid didn't mind routine maintenance. Of all the changes that'd befallen Cybertron after Galvatron rose triumphant and Unicron ate Earth, this remained the same. Maintenance had a kind of repetitive serenity to it, in fact. For a while, he could forget the ache of strained gestalt links or the tag around his forearm. Autobot or Decepticon, every mech was the same once they lay on the repair berth and let him start popping panels.

"Am I gonna live, doc?" Dirge said lazily, almost word-for-word repeating what every other mech on the docket today had said, and the medic's visor beamed amusement. The flyer flicked his wings out of his way in automatic response to a tap of his hand, and First Aid opened one leg hatch to inspect his thrusters.

"I don't know," the smaller 'bot said as he worked. "What did I say about running your self-repair instead of coming in for regular check-ups?"

"Don't do it," Dirge recited a bit ruefully, just another patient who didn't listen to his medic, and the Protectobot shook a chiding finger in his direction. "Yeah, yeah."

"Yet you were running your self-repair again."

"I know, I know."

"Shame on you." Scolding dropped immediately into mournful sadness. First Aid's masked face became a visage of _'Why do you hurt me so?'_ that he turned on his latest patient. "Is it so difficult to come see me?"

"Ah…" The flyer winced. He tried for macho and sulky, but he barely managed to cover up the urge to apologize all over the place. Decepticon medics tended to be brusque and war-hardened, and he'd been well-trained as their patient to ignore death threats and pain. Limpid blue disappointment worked in an entirely different way than bodily harm. The Decepticons who walked into First Aid's medbay didn't stand a chance, at least those Decepticons who didn't follow directions.

First Aid wrung that advantage for everything he could get, just as he always had, and Dirge fell victim to the big blue visor turned in his direction. "Sorry," Dirge muttered grudgingly. "I'm here now. Fix it."

"That's my job," the Protectobot said lightly, letting him off the hook…for now. Knowing Dirge, he'd be back before the end of the stellar cycle. First Aid heaved an exaggerated, put-upon sigh that got him a sour, guilty glower in return, then started the tiny engine repairs. Well, maintenance wouldn't be so necessary if more mechs followed medical instructions. It kept him busy, anyway.

It should have been awkward, maybe, but it wasn't. Defeat had been harsh, but the aftermath had swept in almost gracefully. The Autobot medic fixed Dirge, as he had Thrust and Ramjet before him, as he would Fireflight and Powerglide after him. There was laughter and reprimands. First Aid pouted for effect, making sure Powerglide _really_ felt bad for not coming in right after the bent strut happened. He lectured Dirge - yet again - on the problems that the flyer's engine caused to his own systems.

There was small talk to fill the time as First Aid worked, and some talk that wasn't so small. Thrust told him about the current energy mining operation offworld. Fireflight and Ramjet both updated him on the tracking program. Skyfire had apparently just come back after being replaced by Blitzwing, and Astrotrain had begun his journey to take his turn. Unicron had resumed his destructive streak through the galaxy after consuming the Matrix and leaving Galvatron in control of Cybertron, but nobody was taking the chance that the Chaos Bringer wouldn't turn around someday and come back to destroy them, too. Galvatron had instated the tracking program, setting up a relay of long-distance observers who updated Cybertron on where Unicron currently was at all times. It was one of his more popular decisions.

The Unicronian Heralds were terrifying mechs, but Cybertron was very well aware that they were the only reason Unicron had stopped at consuming a single moon instead of the planet. Galvatron was harsh, cruel, and cold, but he wasn't mad. He'd given Unicron the Matrix, stood by as the Unmaker ate Earth, and returned to Cybertron to rule with an iron fist. The Decepticons had followed him, of course. The surviving Autobots hadn't been given much of a choice.

But…it could have been worse. Unicron had ended the war in more ways than defeat. It was a lot easier to get along with victorious Decepticons when everyone was peripherally aware that someday they might all have to unite and fight for their lives against a threat far larger than mere civil war. Identification tags, assigned jobs, and rules stuck in the Autobots' fuel intakes, but they didn't choke.

At the end of the orn, First Aid closed the medbay and organized all his tools, sterilized the repair berth, and tidied up the room. He checked the time and sat down to annotate his case notes. When his shift finished, he sent a brief report to the Constructicons. Nothing special had happened; it'd been just another day in the medbay. Not all that much different than a day as a regular medic, to be honest, if one switched out who he reported to. Having a supervisor wasn't new for most of the Autobots. It was the part about the supervisor being a Decepticon that made it another day as a defeated Autobot.

To his surprise, Scrapper pinged him back before he could shut off the medbay console for the night.

"Sir?" First Aid opened the line right away. "Is something wrong?"

The Constructicon leader appeared on the console screen, and his sense of pitiless efficiency came through clearly. As per usual, because at spark Scrapper had been meant to deal with construction, not medical repairs. Building materials and blueprints didn't call for good berthside manner. First Aid was used to it, although he immediately scanned the Decepticon's body language for any hint of how urgent this was. Transferred case from another medic? Late schedule for regular maintenance? An accident emergency?

"First Aid," Scrapper said, neutral. "Update your work schedule."

The Protectobot blinked as he dutifully refreshed his comm. queue. The schedule change cleared his appointments for the next two orns and replaced them with an extended _Reserved_ time block. Gaskets closed suddenly throughout the Autobot's systems, and a flush of coolant chilled him in reaction. There were only two reasons that much time would be set aside, and he highly doubted Lord Galvatron would need maintenance again so soon. He desperately checked the reservation tag, hoping against hope that it was Trypticon, let it be Trypticon, he could put up with Octane's leering and bizarre cooing over the reptilian fortress-former, it was actually kind of hilarious, just let it be -

- it wasn't.

"I can't," the medic croaked, leaning back in the chair as weakness swamped him. "I can't do it. Sir, I can't."

"We don't have time," Scrapper said briskly, visor narrowing. Distaste spiked his body language for anyone who knew how to read it, and First Aid had become adept at that. "Every available worker is needed to finish construction of the Academy campus in time for the next semester. We," by which Scrapper meant the Constructicons, because there was no other 'we' in his worldview, "cannot leave the construction site without supervision, and there are no other Decepticons available for supervisor slots. Grapple's talent would be wasted on such a mundane task, and Hoist will already be taking on double shifts in order to cover your rescheduled appointments in addition to assisting onsite. There are other medics on the maintenance roster, but none within convenient commuting distance. **You** will report for duty tomorrow."

The day replayed in sickening detail, seen through another perspective, and First Aid felt nauseous for how pleasant it had been. How _easy_ his life was, even in defeat.

Defeat had been harder on some.

"Sir, no," his voice crackled as the stress hit his vocalizer, and he knew he was pleading, didn't care that he'd have gotten on his knees and begged if the Constructicon on the screen would be moved by such gestures. "It's not…I can't do it, I can't. Don't do this. I'll work doubles - no, I-I can take triples for two orns and make it out to the Academy build site for the second and third. I'll take Hoist's shifts." His processor scrambled, sorting out the schedule. He'd be worn out and useless by the end of two orns of triple shifts, but it was no more than he'd pulled during the war. It was better than the alternative.

He wasn't a prisoner. He could walk out at any time, so long as he was willing to drop every responsibility of this job, transfer to another career field and associated Decepticon supervisor, and never practice as a medic again. It was a strict regulation, but one that worked for keeping track of the defeated Autobots. Registration and terms of work was better than slavery, right up until situations like this.

First Aid didn't want to stop being a medic. It was what defined him. Which left him slumped in his chair, staring at the screen and frantically bargaining, because the choice was cooperation or banishment from the medical field. "Sir, please!"

"You have your schedule," Scrapper snapped.

"Please, if I speak with Hoist," he flinched, already imagining how terrible the conversation would be, "and switch the shifts myself, I could arrange - "

"No." The Constructicon's visor darkened, and First Aid knew he was pushing Scrapper's limited patience for delicate Autobot sensibilities. "There has been consideration given to personnel and timing, and you are best suited for the task. You will report tomorrow, or you will be penalized for dereliction of duty."

A penalty. His processor stalled out, fixating on that single fact to check and recheck. The quarter-decavorn had passed, granting a turnover reset. For Autobots like Blurr or Sideswipe, it meant ditching the previous quarter's speeding fines or tardy fees. The tick marks on their records replaced the physical punishment that might have been meted out during the war, and yes, it was certainly a better solution. But some Decepticon supervisors took the time to personalize the penalties to make them more effective, and the supervisors overseeing Autobot combiner teams were some of those Decepticons.

First Aid's gestalt links flared and ached. They'd been neglected to the point of pain, and he felt even worse knowing that it wasn't just him who suffered. The other Protectobots never questioned why, never asked for explanations or demanded reasons. They just accepted that they wouldn't be allowed to combine into Defensor and suffered in resigned silence for his sins.

They didn't deserve it. None of the Autobots deserved it, but the Protectobots didn't deserve pain because First Aid couldn't go back. He couldn't walk those halls, he couldn't service a dead mech's living components, he couldn't - he couldn't. He couldn't. Even as the gestalt links _burned_ him, even as he knew the other Protectobots felt it as badly, he knew he couldn't do it.

His shoulders shook once, and a wide blue visor gazed in dismayed pleading at the screen. Scrapper stared impassively back, unaffected by sympathy. A klik later, the little Autobot fell forward in the chair as if collapsing, elbows braced on his knees and hands coming up to cover his face.

"I'll…" came hollow and haunted from behind their pitiful shelter. "The penalty. I'll take…I'll take the penalty, sir."

There was silence. After a moment, a weary sigh came from Scrapper's end of the line. The gust of air from his vents was as much exasperation as disappointment. The Protectobot medic was a consistent thorn in the Constructicons' collective side. "You'll be taking Hoist's shifts for the next two orns, so be sure to make the arrangements with him tonight."

The hands didn't drop. "Yes, sir."

"I expect your timeslots to be filled without delay. You will be allowed a sixteen breem commute allowance between the first and second shifts in order to arrive onsite," the Decepticon said dispassionately, and First Aid only nodded acceptance of every stipulation. "Tardiness will be considered a second-tier offence, and it will be penalized accordingly. Contact restrictions will be levied at of the end of the next shift if you do not log an acknowledgement of the current schedule before then. Your gestaltmates will be informed of the penalty restrictions via end-of-term report. Attempted communication with your gestaltmates will be considered anywhere from second to third-tier offences depending on the severity of the violation. Do you understand the conditions of your penalty, First Aid?"

The formal recitation made everything that much harder to bear. "Yes, sir," a miserable whisper acknowledged.

Scrapper's voice dropped to a coldly factual tone. "The cityformer has been dead for vorns, Autobot."

"Yes, sir."

"Recycling his body's purpose through forced mechanics is more feasible than a rebuild. It would be wasteful to not use his structure when it is already in place."

"Yes, sir."

"Why do you persist in this stubbornness?" A hint of puzzlement entered the Constructicon's tone, but First Aid didn't raise his head. He also didn't answer. Annoyance built up on the other side of the line as a glare focused on his bent head. The Decepticon's faint curiosity became irritation when the already disobedient Autobot continued to defy a direct question.

"He didn't have to die," the medic said finally, hoarse and reluctant. "He transported us off Earth. We surrendered when Lord Galvatron," the title clogged his throat in a way it normally didn't, "ambushed us. It was the only way to survive. He knew that." They'd been caught unprepared, already grieving and shattered from the Battle of Autobot City and Unicron's sudden assault on Earth. They hadn't stood a chance, and they'd known it. The terms of surrender Galvatron had offered had been unexpectedly merciful, and far more than they'd dared hope for in their darkest hour. "He agreed to the surrender, knowing that it was to save us, not himself." His visor shut off as a stab of grief ripped through him once more. "I've…come to accept his sacrifice, but I can't - I can't."

He looked up at Scrapper, and raw pain looked right through the screen at remembered nightmares. Dead halls and living components, and he couldn't do it. It was hard enough forcing himself to walk the outer city where the grid underfoot hummed with energy echoes of a living being long since gone. Core torn out, spark extinguished, but the body kept alive through diligent repairs because it was useful. It did as it'd been created to do so long as it was kept functioning by external means. A mech now nothing more than body reduced to a shell, reused by parasitic occupants who'd killed the original owner.

"Please, sir," First Aid said in a near monotone, visor staring straight ahead but not seeing anything. "Don't order me to do this again. I…can't." He couldn't keep Metroplex's corpse alive.

Scrapper studied him. Penalty after penalty, and still the little Autobot persisted. "Some day," the Constructicon said slowly, "this will be routine as well."

It was unclear whether he was referring to the gruesome maintenance work or to the short formality of disciplinary procedure. Perhaps it wasn't an important distinction.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**"Bedtime Stories" **(What happens at the party, stays at the party.)

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Once upon a time," the story goes, and it's such a familiar beginning the listeners hardly pay attention. No matter the middle of the story, the listeners already know the beginning and the end. "Once upon a time, there was a city that lived."

But don't they all? Every city pulses to the rhythm of a thousand different bodies. Life speaks with a thousand different voices, sees from a million different perspectives, and feels a billion different things. No mysteries here; city history is an outline of facts filled out by the personal pasts and minor plots inside the larger, overarcing structure.

Maybe the city has its own story, too, but can't that be said of every old place? The people inside bring it to life, but that life is its own. Telling a city's story by itself empties out the framework, gutting it of half-remembered words and well-worn emotions. Tear away the stories inside the story, and tell only the skeleton's tale.

"Once upon a time," the story goes, "there was a city that lived," and the familiar words open a story that now must also close. Because eventually, inevitably, the words reach an ending. If it lives, then there is only one ending. No life is immortal, and if a city lives, it someday must die. Every city lives, and breathes, and eventually stops.

And maybe this story ends before death, but maybe it doesn't. Maybe it ends with, "And they lived happily ever after."

The listeners won't know until the story finishes.


End file.
